1. Field of the Invention
This invention concerns improvements in methods of employing containers designed to heat food in a microwave oven. It is particularly useful for defrosting and heating frozen convenience foods packaged on aluminum foil trays in paper containers.
2. Description of Prior Art
A microwave oven is a time saving cooking device. But, for microwave cooking, prior art teaches: (1) conventional methods of preparing and cooking foods and conventional cooking containers must be changed, (2) microwave cooking will not brown, broil, crust and fry without an auxilary heat source or a microwave lossy heating element, (3) metal cooking containers have little, if any, utility, and (4) two dinners, cooked simultaneously, take twice the time to cook as one dinner, three dinners three times as long as to cook, etc.
This invention obviates said prior teachings and teaches that conventional metal cooking containers, in particular, aluminum foil cooking containers have the same utility in a microwave oven that enjoy in gas and electric ovens. In my parent application, U.S. Ser. No. 483,144, 59 filed Aug. 27, 1965, and abandoned in favor of my U.S. Pat. No. 3,701,872, 3,731,037, 3,777,099 and 3,881,027, there are described implements which permit microwave ovens to brown, crust, barbecue, fry and broil as do conventional gas and electric ovens. In said related inventions, there are described implements which permit a permanent lossy number to absorb appreciable amounts of microwave energy and convert said microwave energy to heat energy for application to the surface of a cooking foodstuff thereby assisting in the crusting, browning and frying of said foodstuff. My U.S. Pat. No. 3,881,027, also describes the utility of a lining porous to lossy liquids which recycles lossy liquids condensing on a metal foil container's outer surface and along with my U.S. Pat. No. 3,731,037 teaches apparatus and methods of monitoring the temperature of a microwave heating chamber.
Welch, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,714,070, teaches the use of microwave-reflective material to selectively shield parts of a microwave oven load from direct exposure to microwave radiation. my parent application, U.S. Ser. No. 483,144, filed Aug. 27, 1965, and abandoned in favor of my copending related applications, teaches the use of a mircowave-absorptive, heating member to heat a microwave-reflective, heat-conductive member which heated member thence heats a shielded foodstuff. My present invention improves on my aforementioned U.S. Patents and applications by timely providing heat to the bottom of a microwave-reflective, heat-conductive food container to timely heat a shielded surface of a foodstuff located topside of said food container. This timely heating has express utility in reconstituting frozen convenience foodstuffs which are packaged on aluminum trays within paper boxes. This invention teaches how to improve the paper box so that it has utility during the packaging, freezing, shipping, defrosting, heating, serving and dining intervals associated with the preparation and use of frozen convenience foods. For example, a food processor will package and freeze convenience foodstuffs in my improved container, determine the optimum cooking time and post said cooking time on the container's label. Subsequently, an operator of a microwave oven need only remove the package from the freezer, insert the package in a microwave oven and energize the oven for the time prescribed for the power level of the oven. During the time interval from the purchase of the frozen convenience foodstuff until it is consumed and the empty foodstuff package is discarded, there is no special knowledge of microwave cooking, cooking effort or cleanup required.